Browse Items (17 total)
-
Rio 2096: Uma História de Amor e Fúria
Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury is an animated film about Abeguar, an immortal Tupinambá hero, who has been in love with Janaína for 600 hundred years. While narrating their love story, he recounts Brazil’s history of colonization, slavery and the Brazilian military regime, before describing the future, in 2096, when a war for water occurs. (Film synopsis by Éowyn Bailey)Tags Tupinambá / Tupi -
They Are We
They Are We is the story of a remarkable reunion, 170 or so years after a family was driven apart by the ravages of the transatlantic slave trade. In Central Cuba, proud members of the Ganga-Longoba, a small Afro-Cuban ethnic group, have kept their unique heritage alive. Incredibly, through decades of brutal enslavement, independence wars, and then the denying of all religions after the revolution, they have retained a collection of distinct songs and dances that one of their ancestors brought from Africa as a slave. (Icarus Films) -
Selva trágica
Dos mujeres jóvenes, Agnes y Florence, huyen de Belice. Cruzan la jungla y el Río Hondo que marca la frontera con México, pero su perseguidor las encuentra: solo Agnes sobrevive y huye a la jungla mexicana. Días después, un grupo de chicleros mexicanos encuentra a Agnes inconsciente y la llevan a su campamento. Su presencia produce tensión entre los hombres que han estado trabajando en la selva durante ocho meses. Uno por uno caen bajo el encanto de Agnes y suceden misteriosas muertes: un chiclero cae en picada desde un árbol de zapote, otro enferma de malaria y uno más es devorado por hormigas. Solo un chiclero maya sospecha de Agnes. Según una leyenda maya, una bella mujer seduce a los hombres en la jungla y causa su muerte. (Filmoteca UNAM)Tags Maya -
Aruanda
The film describes the miserable lives of the descendants of the slaves, who founded a "quilombo." The men plant cotton in the dry ground. The women work in crafts in an economic cycle that does not bring in cash. The poverty of the film-making is an expression of the miserable conditions that are not present only in the reality that is represented in the film, but contaminates the very material nature of the film (Torino Film Festival). -
Alma no olho
Alma no olho (Soul in the Eye), a short film directed and performed by Zózimo Bulbul in 1973, constitutes the inaugural gesture of black cinema in Brazil. Bulbul’s status as a pioneer for Black Brazilian cinema does not reside in historical chronology, because he was not the first Black Brazilian director: Jose Cajado Filho, Haroldo Costa, and Odilon Lopes were his predecessors in that lineage. His importance lies, rather, in the aesthetic and narrative advances accomplished by his film, which has survived its ostracism—imposed by Brazilian critics and cinema studies through an exclusionary hegemony of almost forty years—to be taken up again as a reference point by a new generation of Black Brazilian filmmakers. [...] In recent years, many analyses have been carried out in the field of black cinema studies on Alma no olho, largely devoted to its historical relevance, leaving the inventiveness of its aesthetic gesture somewhat in the background. Frequent note is made of the film’s inspirations: the script draws from Soul on Ice, the 1968 book by Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver about his time in exile, and the soundtrack consists of music from the album Kulu Sé Mama, the 1965/67 collaboration by Juno Lewis and John Coltrane, to whom Bulbul dedicates the film. In Alma no olho’s eleven minutes, Bulbul performs a pantomime of the history of Black people between Africa and the diaspora, tracing a saga that begins with a state of freedom as lived on the African continent, passes through the hardships of the Atlantic slave trade, and finally ends with the breaking of all the chains of colonial domination that continued to imprison black bodies and minds in the period following the Abolition—the end of the transnational slave trade, in 1888, in Brazil. On-screen, only his black body, some objects, and a white background are present for most of the film’s duration. While the performance is under way, the character played by Bulbul faces the camera at different moments, sometimes in complicity, sometimes with irony, but always defiantly. (Source: Oliveira, Janaína. "With the Alma no Olho: Notes on Contemporary Black Cinema." Film Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 2, Winter 2020, pp. 32–38, doi: 10.1525/fq.2020.74.2.32.) -
Menino 23 - Infâncias Perdidas no Brasil
The Forgotten Boys of Brazil follows the research of historian Sidney Aguilar, beginning with the discovery of bricks marked with Nazi swastikas on a farm in the countryside of São Paulo. The documentary reveals something really frightening: during the 1930s, fifty black boys were taken from an orphanage in Rio de Janeiro and led to the farm where the bricks had been found. There, the boys were identified by numbers and subjected to slave labor by a family that was part of the political, military, and economic elite of the country. This family did not hide their affinity for the Nazi ideology.
At the time, Brazil had the largest German population-with 100,000 German-born people and a community of 1 million people of German descent. 2,822 were members of the Nazi Party. Such context helped Brazil become a safe haven for Nazi war criminals after WWII when 20,000 Germans settled there. The most notorious fugitive to settle in Brazil was Dr. Josef Mengele.
Two survivors from this Brazilian tragedy, Aloísio Silva (the “boy 23”) and Argemiro Santos, as well as the family of José Alves de Almeida (known as ‘Two’), reveal their stories for the first time. (Pragda)
-
Roble de olor
In the late 1880's Cuba, a German merchant and farmer meets a freed black slave from Haiti who is herself a successful businesswoman. They fall in love despite social and racial taboos, with tragic results. (World Cat) -
Vazante
Minas Gerais, 1821. Período em que a economia local era baseada na extração de diamantes entrou em colapso. Ao voltar para casa, depois de uma longa viagem, na qual conduzia uma tropa de escravos, Antônio, um patriarca português, descobre que sua mulher morreu em trabalho de parto. Sentindo-se sozinho e isolado em uma fazenda improdutiva, busca um novo casamento com Beatriz, uma menina muito jovem que frustra seu plano de ter filhos. Antônio, então, volta às expedições, negociando negros e gado. Sozinha, Beatriz encontra nos escravos sua companhia. Uma traição implode a família em uma espiral de violência, que é o prenúncio de mudanças. O filme revela algumas de nossas maiores cicatrizes: a escravidão, o casamento forçado de meninas, a mestiçagem fruto do assédio e da exploração sexual das negras, e as hierarquias de poder que pervertem até as relações entre os mais oprimidos. (Cinemateca Brasileira) -
Rancheador
El Rancheador era un mercenario al servicio de los esclavistas para capturar a los negros esclavos en fuga y devolverlos a sus amos. Francisco Estévez no se detiene ante nada y reprime incluso a los campesinos blancos, pero su meta es Melchora, incapturable líder de los negros fugados. Esta historia está basada en el "Diario del Rancheador", obra del escritor cubano Cirilo Villaverde. (Film Affinity ES) -
Quilombo
Palmares is a 17th-century quilombo, a settlement of escaped slaves in northeast Brazil. In 1650, plantation slaves revolt and head for the mountains where they find others led by the aged seer, Acotirene. She anoints one who becomes Ganga Zumba, a legendary king. For years, his warriors hold off Portuguese raiders; then he agrees to leave the mountains in exchange for reservation land and peace. It's a mistake. Zumbi, a warrior whose mother was killed by Portuguese and who spent 15 years with the Whites, stays in the mountains to lead Palmares. In 1694, the Portuguese import a ruthless captain from São Paulo to lead an assault on the free Blacks. Can Zumbi keep Palmares free? (IMDB) -
La raíz olvidada
La presencia de los esclavos africanos en México ha sido desconocida por la historia oficial. La raíz olvidada incursiona en este tema desconocido para la mayor parte de la población mexicana. (SIC México) -
El otro Francisco
Based on the novel Francisco by Anselmo Suárez y Romero, "The Other Francisco" is a socio-economic analysis of slavery and class struggle through the retelling of the original novel. The film contrasts the romantic conceptions of plantation life found in Suárez Romero's novel with a realistic expose of the actual historical conditions of slavery throughout the Americas. It offers a critical analysis of the novel, showing how the author's social background led to his use of particular dramatic structures to convey his liberal, humanitarian viewpoint. (IMDB) -
Tango Negro: les Racines Africaines du Tango
Tango Negro explora la expresión africana en el tango y la contribución de las culturas africanas al tango. El tango era una reflexión de la vida de los esclavos llevados a Sudamérica – Argentina y Uruguay entre otros países – desde África Central en su mayoría, sobre todo desde el antiguo reino de Congo. La película revela hasta qué punto la música africana dejó sus huellas en el tango, mezclando la música en directo con entrevistas a amantes e historiadores del tango en Latinoamérica y en Europa, el famoso pianista argentino Carlos Cáceres entre ellos. (Film Affinity ES) -
Ganga Zumba
Near the end of the 16th century, slaves working in northeastern Brazilian sugar cane mills conspire to escape to Quilombo dos Palmares, a haven for fugitive black slaves. Among the group is young Ganga Zumba (Antonio Pitanga), who rises to become head of the first revolutionary republic in the Americas. (Film at Lincoln Center) -
Xica da Silva
In the 18th century, in Minas Gerais, the Portuguese mined diamonds and gold. João Fernandes de Oliveira arrives from Lisbon with the Crown's exclusive contract for mining diamonds. He quickly asserts control, letting the intendant and other authorities know that he's onto their corruption. Xica, a slave of the local sergeant-major and possessed of phenomenal sex drive and tricks that cause men to howl with pleasure, quickly captures João. He denies her no extravagance; miners die for his greed. Eventually Lisbon hears of João's excesses and sends an inspector. José, a political radical, provides Xica refuge; her unrelenting sexual tingle is Brazil's spirit. (IMDB) -
La última cena
The film showed a pious sugar plantation owner in Cuba who holds a large banquet and attempts to teach his slaves about religion and the necessity of suffering for eternal happiness. While the slaves believe that they are being shown kindness, they are merely being placated, and the landowner does not give them the following day off of work as he promised to do, leading to a slave revolt. This film also makes anti-religious commentary through the actions of the count and the hypocritical ideologies that he preaches. Source: Sundt, Catherine. “Religion and Power: The Appropriation of Da Vinci’s the Last Supper in Viridiana and L’Ultima Cena.” Romance Notes, vol. 49, no. 1, Jan. 2009, p. 72. -
Maluala
En la época colonial, los negros esclavos que huían, cimarrones, fundaban comunidades conocidas como palenques. Maluala fue el principal palenque de la región oriental de Cuba. Ante la imposibilidad de vencer, los sublevados deciden tomar justicia por sus manos. Una historia de otro siglo, llena de acción. http://cinematecacubana.com/